. “DURAND! DURAND ISN’T WAKING UP!”

  Good morning, Lenny! What’s good? Why are you shouting?

  “He told me he won’t drink it… I guess he didn’t believe me…”

  Is he comatose?

  “I don’t believe so… I’m sure it’s the poison, though!”

  Can you find Cenvin, Assert, and Cedric?

  “I’ll try!”

  Last night, shortly after Lenny’s talk with Nyri and Sinner, the honey badger came to Assert and warned her first. She laughed dismissively, stating that she would never be in any danger from a disappointment like Cenvin. Next, he went and told Durand of the urgent news; Durand listened to his words and threw the flask away(later, it was found that Durand had already drained the flask, he just didn’t want to admit it). Somewhat assured, Lenny then went to bed.

  The morning is moist and stuffy as Cedric feverishly tries to rejuvenate the unconscious Durand. Around them, the swampy water seems to bubble and boil as the rising sun shines its waves of heat down on the caravan. A merchant stumbles, falls, stands back up, and throws up last night’s dinner into the mud.

  Lenny frantically wastes a Cure Wounds onto Durand uselessly. He frantically sprints throughout the entire caravan, looking for Cenvin and Assert. As he finishes looking under the last wagon, a noisy commotion rings out from the center, where Durand lies. He hurries over and gasps in shock.

  Cenvin is tossed alongside Durand, sprawling like a broken puppet, bloodied and defeated. He seems to be very cold, Lenny observes, but at the same time, he has burn marks all over his body. Assert kicks him in the stomach ruthlessly.

  “Prick tried to murder me during twilight, when everyone is asleep,” she raises her face proudly, “but he’s too loud for a rogue. As I said, a disappointment. HALT!”

  Pillars of ice erupt from the ground to block a few merchants’ way towards Cenvin and Durand. In their trembling hands are potions of healing.

  “Who told you to waste perfectly valuable potions on these guys?”

  “You’re going to kill him!” One shouts.

  “Now that you said it, maybe I shall!”

  Intense arguing breaks out and the men flock to Assert, shouting and spitting furiously with each other in a massive conglomerate of angry traders.

  Lenny is left standing alone, forgotten, watching the already terrible situation escalate into the boundaries of violence. Slowly, his mouth twitches in a psychopathic smile. He bares his animal teeth hungrily at the mob. In his eyes, the frail and disgusted humanity is replaced by an unstoppable force of primal nature. He doubles down as his maniacal laughter drowns out the arguing.

  His voice pierces the air coldly. Everyone stops and turns to him, silently watching, quietly judging. He stammers briefly as he catches his breath. With a final hiccup, he points his claw softly at Cenvin, who is prone on the ground, and remedies him with Cure Wounds. Cenvin instantly leaps up and draws his Shimmerim, staring menacingly at Assert.

  “Me and you, right here, right now,” he gasps hoarsely. “I don’t need to kill you the way you think I will.”

  “Very well,” she sneers, drawing a short glaive from a Bag of Holding. “I won’t use my ability to give you some even ground to fight on.”

  With a majestic cry of hatred Cenvin charges Assert, Shimmerim in hand, and cutting through space to pierce her heart. She tenses and dodges at the last second, her nonchalant attitude is now nowhere to be seen as she lowers her center of gravity. She responds with two quick jabs, both of which slits Cenvin’s left arm. He winces painfully and he temporarily retreats. This battle is the real deal.

  Well, not for Assert.

  Assert Flofel Kepilk is not a melee warrior. Despite this, she can easily beat most of Shadow’s Edge in a fair duel. Raised locally in Italica City, her combat experience encompasses many wars. Daughter of nobles, she was recruited into a newly formed espionage agency under the Royalty, known as Shadow’s Edge, as a child agent to infiltrate the upper class to root out potential rebels during the time before the civil war.

  Once war erupted a few years after, she was officially instituted as an agent for Shadow’s Edge, now repurposed to deal with unique and special operations, especially to combat the rise of Starmetal Valley. Many of these operations included assassinations of critical Starmetal elites, sabotaging rebel supply lines, negotiating with Starmetal to assist the Royalists starting with the Battle of Seashine, and espionage behind the enemy lines for the final decisive battle of Italica City. Additionally, she was a major contributor to the shadow war waged between the two organizations, and because of that she was promoted to a Captain.

  After the end of the war, Assert oversaw the continental operation to search and destroy the remaining rebel forces. Lucius was so impressed at her lethal efficiency that he promoted her to Marshal and positioned her to be his second-in-command.

  During all of this, she had been weathered, beaten, tortured, and faltered. She had witnessed the death of comrades; the betrayal of her most trusted friends; the massacres of civilians; and Lucius’s shady means of achieving power. However, from all these experiences she had been taught deception, martial arts, psychological warfare, stealth, leadership, and a deep sense of discipline.

  Emulating Starmetal’s traditions of concealing their faces behind a mask, she has learned to wear heavy plate armor to add another layer of protection in addition to her mobility spells. She was schooled in using every martial weapon to consistently and adeptly protect herself.

  At her core, however, she is still a spellcaster. She is a jack of all trades with almost every spell for every occasion prepared 24/7. Many are also self-buffs to supplement her Flaming Ice ability.

  War had pervaded her entire life, bloody had been her trials, and hellish were her tribulations. She isn’t going to lose to a good-for-nothing thief.

  Cenvin takes a step to prepare to dodge Assert’s next attack. Using the lack of a counterattack to her advantage, she shoots her glaive with a meticulous throw, then draws a pair of shortswords, similar to Durand’s, and dashes up to Cenvin and lacerates him four brutal times.

  The spectators gasp. Cedric tries to push into the fight, but he is dissuaded quickly by the intensity of Assert’s attacks.

  Cenvin stumbles and falls onto his knees. Four huge bleeding gashes are in his torso, two deep cuts on his left arm, and a glaive is jutting out of his shoulder, still quivering silently. The drops of blood slowly turn the dirty ground into little holes of soft mud.

  “Listen up, Cenvin. You are hereby exiled from the caravan immediately. You may not say farewell to your party. Be grateful. Due to the nature of your crime, I have perfect authority to execute you on the spot. Take your belongings and leave.”

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  “Damn!” Cenvin clenches his teeth in defiance but cries out agonizingly as Assert cruelly pulls out her glaive. “I’ll leave.”

  He stands up and staggers away to the wagon where his backpack is being stored. Soon, a merchant comes back and reports that he has left.

  A ray of pure light descends from the dark sky and lands on top of Durand as a gelatinous ball. She consumes Durand’s head inside and instantly rejuvenates him. He jolts awake the moment Nyri hops off.

  “Wha-what happened?”

  “Who’s going to tell him?” Lenny asks nobody.

  In the clearing where the party previously ate dinner last night. Durand sharpens his knife while Lenny absentmindedly stokes the long-dead fire.

  “He miscalculated the poison?”

  “I’ve studied it. I can’t be wrong. The little prick can’t even make a proper sleeping drug. That’s why you were out for so long, and you might’ve never woken up if Nyri wasn’t here to help.”

  Nyri slithers into Assert’s shoulder and meows softly. Assert sits completely still like a rock. Nyri tickles her neck. No response. She scratches her arm. No response. She taps on the mask. No response.

  She gives a defeated sigh and rests on her shoulder peacefully.

  Durand says, “We must get him back here at once! It’s almost night, who knows what might happen to him?”

  “You may go. But keep in mind that he may already be dead.”

  “So you knew he’d die!”

  Lenny closes his eyes on the heated argument and lies down on the log for a little nap.

  “I’m leaving!”

  Durand stands up and puts away his knife.

  “You cannot. It’s too dangerous.”

  A psychotic smile carves Durand’s lips upwards.

  “Guess what? I reached level 6. A swamp is nothing to me anymore.”

  Lenny tries to recall what Rangers unlock when they reach level 6 but fails.

  “Fine. Go kill yourself.”

  The caravan went through a restless night. Somehow, word got out that Durand had left the caravan too(I can only imagine that Lenny can’t keep his mouth shut). Poor Cedric had to go through every wagon like a tired parent and reassure every sleepless merchant that their safety was still guaranteed.

  Although she wasn’t visibly any different, everyone who saw Assert could tell that she was distressed in some shape or form. She would often draw a curious, mechanical-looking trinket from her Bag of Holding and play with it, occasionally putting it against her pterion for prolonged periods.

  Finally, at dusk after what seemed like an eternal night, two figures appeared on the horizon, to everyone’s delight. Durand looked relatively normal and calm, but Cenvin was panicky and immediately asked to have a meeting.

  “I, I- I… I, I stumbled into a slime encave!” Cenvin professed to the party.

  “And?” Assert replied.

  “They seemed neutral, but they had this big treasure stash-”

  “Don’t tell me-”

  “I couldn’t help myself-”

  Durand screamed furiously.

  “I THOUGHT YOU WOULDN’T STEAL NO MORE AFTER WE LEFT THE CITY! DID YOU GET CAUGHT?”

  “One of them might’ve seen me…”

  “‘Might’ve’ is not a reassuring answer. If they’re angry then they will track you down… how much did you steal?” Assert calmly asks as Lenny tries to placate Durand.

  “All of it…”

  “Value in gold?”

  “Around 600 GP?”

  “That’s too much to let go of easily. They’re going to be after us.”

  “Maybe they didn’t even see Cenvin take it, however,” Lenny interrupts. “We can also assume that right now, they’re simply confused to as where their human visitor went.”

  “No, that’s too much of a risk. We need to take them out.”

  “For once, I agree with Assert,” Cenvin nervously joins.

  “I also agree,” Durand says.

  Lenny hesitates, then he slightly nods his head.

  “Wait wait wait! Who’s going to watch over the caravan?” Cedric quickly asks.

  “I’ll stay,” Lenny responds hastily.

  “No. Lenny, if we use your Wildshape we can get there, wipe them out, and return in no time.”

  Upon hearing the word “Wildshape” he shudders.

  “What’s wrong, Lenny? Afraid to Wildshape?” Assert leans in and inquires.

  He is frozen. Memories of his first Wildshape, which permanently transformed him into a honey badger, are still freshly burned into his mind. During the fight with Hadke, he thought he mustered up the courage to cast it again. He was brutally beaten, of course, and he lost faith in his ability that was passed down to him by his mother. The thought of being unable to help with it tore his heart apart. Nearby, Cenvin’s voice tears a hole into his thoughts.

  “Now’s not the time for PTSD, bud! Are you going to say something?”

  “Whatever,” Durand says firmly. “Let Lenny stay and protect. We can use spells to traverse faster. Let’s go!”

  The little cave is chronically dark. A pitiful and depressing hideout, but for the slimes, the original inhabitants of the Sealine Swamp, this is the safest shelter they can have. The slime population had dwindled by 90% since the introduction of the Otherworld, and even now they’re on the verge of cannibalization to survive. Nothing is edible anymore.

  Remembering that they used to be neutral towards the humans, they were delighted to have a human visitor to pass on their plea for help in hopes that he would kindly agree. In their excitement about having a guest, they forgot the treasure hoard they had accidentally gathered over the years. Every once in a while, a slime would suck up a coin from the wilds and stash it inside the cave.

  Now, the slimes aren’t very smart, as you might have guessed. They eventually lost track of their esteemed guest, and they seemed to have forgotten where their treasure was, as it was not where they remembered it to be.

  After a while, a slime looks out of the cave and jumps with replenished animation.

  “It’s the human! He’s returned!” It gurgles to the others.

  Everyone enthusiastically crowds out of the cave to greet their friend.

  “Look! They’re all coming out! They did know!” Cenvin cries in fear.

  Looking straight ahead with a fatal glint in her eyes, Assert prepares a fireball in her plated gauntlets.

  “Let’s do this, then. Remember, don’t let bits of the slime get on you. They’re acidic.”

  An ear-splitting explosion erupts amongst the slimes.

  A green tornado of two shortswords cleaves through the ranks.

  A rapier pierces the air and decimates a little green blob.

  A hundred icicles descend from the sky, all detonating as they reach the ground into icy fireballs.

  An arrow is shot into the air, and it dissolves into thousands of little thorns to pelt the remaining survivors.

  A dagger is plunged into the final slime.

  It’s over.

  About time we raised the death count, eh, readers? I bring you the latest number: from 12,430 to 12,572!

  And before I conclude this chapter, we haven’t checked on Shyn in a while! Did you miss her?

  The Beakimps refused to help, so she was forced to traverse the treacherous Seashine Mountains alone. However, finally, after all this torment, starvation, hyperthermia, and suffering, she can finally see her destination on her horizon: Seashine City!

  Shyn looks down at the ragged strips of cloth covering her body: the perfect urchin disguise to sneak into the city with. Looking up at the spectral-filled sky, her face is no longer vivid with emotion. By now, she simply wishes to give up, but a childlike flame still burns within her. It’s all Starmetal’s fault that she is in this current predicament, and Starmetal will do the same thing to others like her. STARMETAL HAS TO PAY.